Some of us are still playing hockey, whilst the majority have now finished for the season. The Men’s 2s and 3s got their 3 points each this weekend, however many other results sadly reflected the problem of games being re-arranged during the holidays, as the majority of teams were without their full squads.
Men’s 1st XI
No match.
Men’s 2nd XI 1-0 Southampton 1s
Match report to follow.
Men’s 3rd XI 5-0 Epsom 2s
Sporting venues have a certain mystique and provide a sack full of dreams. Wimbledon tennis club, Lords, Upton Park, The Principality, all theatres of dreams. Add to that list Therfield School, makes one dream of being at TD. Langers showed his naivety by walking through the waste land to Tescos pre game but he survived.
Now the last part of the title. In 2003 literary academics had wet dreams and became animated conversationalists over the Lynne Truss book “Eats shoots and leaves”, a book about the importance of punctuation in the English language. Give the lady credit, many mugs actually bought the book and so she, like Jordan who made millions from silicon enhancements, became famous. Our game was very much “Play shit win and go”. Depending on whether you insert a comma or not illustrates our 120 minutes in Leatherhead. The smell from the toilets gives a clue but so does a 10 minute spell at the end of the first half. I can assure you that if you have time spurn the thought of wanting to read Ms Truss’ book and speak to elder Rippers who has a list of far more entertaining web site addresses that he would gladly give to you. “Go” after the game we did as Epsom cricket club were invoking quasi apartheid laws due to having segregation rules for April to September – “no hockey players in the club when we are around”. Not sure much English cricket is played on April 7th other than in Dubai or UAE. A shame as Epsom’s club is a welcoming place and a good one to visit after a game.
Epsom needed to win this game and so we had the privilege of 2 SHUA appointed umpires so no chance of irrelevant and unwarranted cards to raise funds for the pitch replacement at TD. Ahead of the game Eds commented at our young side, only being let down by Heardy and Cato. We had 9 true old Cranleighans with a 5 decade spread of walking those hallowed corridors and not so hallowed pubs. We all felt for Hunts going to the football place up the road.
We started very well and nearly scored in the first minute following a diagonal forward run from Langers, to be one of our 2 men of the match, whose cross did not quite reach the waiting forwards in the D. Not long afterwards Langers did score as the Epsom defence parted like one of the girl’s limbs on those web sites referred to above. His mishit shot bobbled through the keeper who had tried saving the ball twice before it reached him. More pressure but no more goals in the next 15 minutes after which we had our worst patch of the game and allowed Epsom to dominate for 10 minutes. Our second man of the match, Rosko, made two excellent saves look easy and we went in 1 – 0 up at half time.
Returning to our short game enabled us to kill off the match with 2 more from Langers, the second an absolute belter, one for Hunts who matched Langers first and third goals combined, racing into the spreading defence and threatening to break the back board with a real humdinger. Knappy nicked the 5th with a deflection from an Eds short corner strike, that may well have been going in, and we ran out 5-0 winners. Our dream remains alive in going through the season unbeaten on the pitch, words carefully chosen taking into account Pointsgate.
The penultimate dick of the day is awarded to our kilted “two for one” man who messaged the skipper “Have just woken up, lost my phone somehow so alarm didn’t go off (it probably did at some unsuspecting persons place who wanted a lie in). There is no way I can drive yet. Not sure when I got in but it wasn’t long ago”. Presumably the message sent to Eds came from the phone in question from that unsuspecting person who knew all about Therfield School.
Men’s 4th XI 1-2 Goan 1s
Match report to follow.
Men’s Barnstormers
No match.
Men’s Hamstrings 1-4 Richmond Rogues
Match report to follow.
Ladies 1st XI 1-4 Wayfarers
It was first hot day of 2018 in Battersea Park, playing on our least favourite carpet. The Ladies 1s were playing a tight team of just 12, with Evie Tanner and Ellie Wilson kindly joining us. A beautiful 1st goal sailed in from the top of the D scored by Georgie Syms striking from a short. The game was physical and we absorbed many ball impact injuries. The oppo scored many goals most on breaks. But we played some great one-twos and some strong round the back passes. Despite a loss of 1-4, the last game of the season was a disappointing score line but good fun and decorated by some lovely blossom.